This event will debate how and in what ways the web has complicated, enhanced, and changed the rights of citizens for better or for worse.

The ongoing fallout from the Snowden revelations has both sharpened awareness of how our rights are changing and highlighted a culture of indifference towards once cherished rights and freedoms. Seemingly wherever we look doctrines are clashing: we secure our homes and yet all but give away the keys to our bank accounts; we push towards mandates for openness in what we do and how we share that might limit our freedom of choice; we seek to protect hard won national rights whilst acting as supranational citizens online; and we bring our physical environment into the web and yet hesitate over whether every citizen should be able to access that web on their own terms. As we gear up to celebrate 800 years since the Magna Carta established that both King John of England and all he ruled were subject to the same laws, this digital conversation asks how and in what ways have we might or indeed might not have drifted away from these fundamental values in the age of the web.